


To Help You See.

by ThePerk42



Series: The Golden Spiral Universe [4]
Category: Hunger Games Series - All Media Types
Genre: (but it’s mild!), Angst, Enthusiastic Consent, F/M, Love, Painting, Sexual Content, naked painting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-20
Updated: 2020-08-20
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:28:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,385
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26009545
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePerk42/pseuds/ThePerk42
Summary: In a moment referenced in “Just Hold On, It Won’t be Long”, Peeta convinces Katniss to let him paint her one night. It turns out to be less painting and more loving, but what can you do?
Relationships: Katniss Everdeen/Peeta Mellark
Series: The Golden Spiral Universe [4]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1690738
Comments: 4
Kudos: 33





	To Help You See.

It’s about 8 pm and, since it’s winter, it’s already been dark for several hours. I’m in “my room” at Katniss’ house, setting up my easel and paintbrushes. I’ve convinced her, after no small amount of gentle encouragement, to let me paint her. It’s not that I wanted to force her into it, but I’ve been talking to Dr. Aurelias about the importance of facing my own mental blocks, and it’s gotten me thinking that Katniss still has one of her own: a perception that she is unattractive. And not in a shallow, vain sort of way…I get the sense from Katniss that she sees herself as a deeply ugly person – she faults herself for many of her decisions in the past, and I see her hatred of her “new self” so often. It doesn’t help that she has previously seen my nightmarish depictions of her on canvas, but I need her to know that’s not how I see her anymore. Now that my head is clear (well, clearer), I want to help her see herself the way that I do – I want to show her that she is so beautiful to me – history and all.

That’s what tonight has been about since I first got the idea. A few months ago, after we made love, I told her how beautiful she was. And it was like the words made her feel panic. She froze in my arms and didn’t say much more for the rest of the night. Since then, the few times I have used the word again, she has had the same reaction. Like she’s scared and a little bit angry that I’ve complimented her. I need Katniss to know that I really mean it when I call her beautiful. I think she is beautiful in so many ways, beyond just the length or health of her hair, the colour of her skin, the arch of her brows, the expanse of her abdomen in the morning light…Katniss is beautiful to me because of how she sings, the way she cares for others, her desperate efforts to survive and thrive. I need her to see all of those things.

So, I’ve convinced her to let me paint her, for the first time, without any clothing on in the hopes that I could show her all of the same beauty that I see every day. It’s a risk, I know. I’m not sure how much I’ll be able to get done before I pop, just looking at her laying on the bed some mornings is enough to send me to the shower for release before the day starts. But I think this will help her, and maybe, I think – a little selfishly, maybe it will help me, too.

While I am setting up my painting station in my bedroom, Katniss is…getting ready in hers. I’m not sure what she is doing beyond getting undressed. It’s not like she wears makeup, but perhaps she is braiding her hair or talking herself out of it (hopefully not the latter).

The window shows a dark sky outside, lit with the street lamp that denotes the “Victor’s Village” – though I don’t think anyone really calls it that anymore. I can see fat flakes of snow falling outside the window and hear the hush of winter. The light in the room is from a fixture overhead, but I did light a few candles. If Katniss asks me why, there’s no way I’m going to admit that I was trying to set some kind of mood. I walk to the bathroom to fill my rinse cup with water. On my way back, I watch Katniss as she emerges, slowly and nervously, from her bedroom. She is wrapped in a long, tan sheet, her hair loose around her shoulders. It is finally starting to look like the hair that she used to have, longer and dark, shiny against the matte fabric of the sheet and the smooth patch of skin where her shoulder peeks through a gap in the sheet.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” she asks. I feel like I should be asking her the same thing.

“Of course I’m sure.” I walk towards her, reach out to brush my fingers through her hair. I haven’t thought about where this painting will go – Katniss will probably want to hide it away in storage so that she never has to look at it again – but it is important to me to show her what I see, even if she decides to hide the painting away forever after looking at it.

I move the cup of water to the side so that there is nothing between us and press my lips to Katniss’. “Are _you_ sure?” I ask her, raising an eyebrow in askance. She nods mutely and, in opposition of her nod, tugs the sheet a little tighter around her body. Seeing her here, in the hallway, nerves are starting to flutter in my abdomen, my heart rate is starting to pick up, my cheeks feel warm. “The room’s ready,” I tell her, turning to lead her. I set the cup of water down next to my paints and gesture to the bed. “I thought you could lie there, facing me? The light looks pretty good.”

So Katniss situates herself on the bed, still entangled in the sheet, and looks at me with wide eyes. “Here?”

“It would be helpful if I could see you as I’ll be painting you,” I say. Even though Katniss and I have been naked together several times, this is the first time I’ll be seeing her naked body in full light and _studying_ it. I understand why she’s nervous. At the same time that she’s a ball of anxiety, I’m already half hard and we haven’t even gotten started yet. I can’t help the way she makes me feel, but I also feel a little bit of guilt for getting riled up so easily. I swallow those feelings and step towards her, pinching a corner of the fabric. “May I?”

Katniss nods and lets go of the fistfuls of sheet that she had been holding. The material falls away from her, revealing…just Katniss underneath. She is everything I remember: dark skin trailing over her bones and muscle, still tight but without the hungry look she used to have; light peach fuzz over her belly and legs; scars trailing across her skin like a topographical study. I suck in a deep breath slowly and then realize I am not looking at her face. I snap my eyes up to look at her and am relieved to see that Katniss is smiling at me. She lifts her chin pointedly at the tent I’ve already pitched in my pants. “Are you going to be able to paint?” She giggles a little – amused, but probably also surprised by how bold she’s just been – comments like that aren’t usually in Katniss’ vernacular.

I laugh at her – mostly to let her know I’m not upset by her comment. “We’ll see how long I can make it.” And then I step away, dropping into the mindset of a painter who is trying to determine the best way to situate his subject. I reach out and shift Katniss around a bit, move a pillow here, shift a leg there. I want her to be comfortable, since she’ll be in that position for some time, but also want to make sure that the light hits her just right. After I finally get her settled, my erection has calmed down a little, but not enough to bring me any sense of comfort. “Ready?” I ask, grabbing a pencil to sketch an outline.

“Just waiting on you,” she says. And then, believe or not, Katniss Everdeen _winks_ at me.

I suck in a deep breath, trying to somehow hide the way she’s making me feel. I touch my pencil to the canvas and it begins to move, almost of its own volition. As attracted as I am to Katniss, once I start working on the painting, it’s like everything melts away but the art – I am on a different plane and interacting solely with the canvas. I trace the lines of Katniss’ breasts – I never noticed until now how they dip slightly before rising into a peak at the tip of her nipple, the swell of them on the underside where gravity can do its best work. My pencil sketches the shape of her waist, slightly concave because she has dipped one of her legs to hide most of the dark patch of hair between her legs. Her thigh seems to quiver – or maybe that’s just the flickering shadow of the candle that I lit, but then I see her foot twitching. “You okay?” I finally look up at her face and she is watching me almost as closely as I think I was studying her.

“Fine,” she says, and she sounds mostly okay, if still a little nervous. “It’s just a little chilly in here.”

Now that she says it, I can feel the goose flesh raising on my arms, too. I get up to stoke the fire and when I return to my easel, she hasn’t moved. She really is okay, I guess. She smiles at me again, a small smile but not a fake one, and blinks slowly as I settle back behind my easel. It doesn’t take long to sketch her – I’m not trying to get the finer details (which will be in paint), but rather the basic shape of her. I shift in my seat, trying to get comfortable, wondering if she’ll think I’m a lecher if I unzip my pants. I shake the thought from my mind and turn to creating the right colour for her skin. Of course Katniss’ skin is multiple colours, shadows dancing in the firelight, but the base of her skin is a gorgeous olive hue, darker than my skin but not quite as dark as Gale’s. I don’t want him in my head right now. I focus on glopping a variety of colours onto my palette and then mixing them together, swirling until they are one. It’s a little too dark for Katniss’ skin – perfect for the shadows, though. So I take a small scoop out to use later and mix in a bit of white to the rest.

And so it goes – I continue to mix new colours, smooth them over the Katniss outline on my canvas, and observe her with great intensity. She doesn’t look particularly engaged, but not bored either. I wonder what she is thinking. I’ve never had anyone sit for a painting before, so I’m not sure of the protocol here. Do I talk to her? I mean, I know that’s silly, I can talk to Katniss whenever I want. But I feel so focused on the canvas – I hope she isn’t offended at my silence.

After I’m-not-sure-how-long, Katniss murmurs something. “Sorry?” I ask, looking up from the painting.

“Do you want to take a break?” she asks me. She raises her hand from where it has been draped over her rib cage so that she can gesture somewhere in the vicinity of my crotch. “That’s been happening for the last hour at least and it can’t be comfortable.”

I look down and can’t help the small laugh that escapes me. “A break?” I raise my head and she has already moved from her previous pose to lay on her back. She looks particularly inviting there, in the bed that is mine but in which I almost never sleep, beckoning me without words. It doesn’t take me much convincing to join Katniss in bed any day, so I drag the cover over my pallet and drop my brush into the cup of water beside me. She reaches out when I get to the bed and starts to undo the clasp on my pants, curling her body towards me and acting with increased fervour. In a swift motion, she pushes my pants and underwear to the floor and then rolls to her back once more, gestures for me to remove my paint spattered shirt. I comply hastily, dropping it into the pile of clothing at my feet. When I try to step out of my pants, my foot catches and I trip, falling onto the bed. Katniss laughs, but not unkindly, and waits for me to extricate myself so that I can join her on the bed.

She was gorgeous when I was painting her, but I think she is even more so now. Her cheeks are flush with what I hope is arousal (and not just from laughing at me). Her skin is hot against mine as she wraps a leg around my flank. Her fingers dance over my skin, catching on a smear of paint on one of my arms. “Messy,” she says, and then drags the paint over my nose, laughing again. Her smile is genuine, more genuine than I’ve seen in some time, and her hair is dark against the cream and tan coloured sheets.

It’s no surprise, looking down at her like she is, that the word escapes my mouth without even thinking about it. “You’re so beautiful,” I tell her, and then I feel my body tense. I know she doesn’t like it when I call her that. But she doesn’t even seem to react, just reaches up to press her palm to my face, paint slicked fingers on my jaw. She smiles again, smaller this time, but no less genuine than the last, and says, “So are you.”

I press my body down against her, kiss her more deeply than, perhaps, I ever have. Her hands brush down my back and I imagine the colour yellow, dragged over my skin by her palms. Green brushed over my flanks by her calves. Purple, between us, from her belly. Katniss is more colourful than she knows. I try to stop thinking so much, and situate myself over her so that I can press in. She sighs, as though she’s been waiting for this as long as I have. I don’t get any more work done on the painting that evening, but Katniss seems amenable to sitting for another session.


End file.
